Monday, 26 October 2020

It's not you Borat...it's us

The former Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously said that a week was a long time in politics. The last twelve months have also shown us that a year can feel like an eternity. So, what chance then of revisiting something fourteen years on and finding something fresh to say?

Kudos to Sacha Baron Cohen for at least trying in his latest Amazon offering Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, a sequel of sorts to his 2006 film Borat. Sadly, it seems that the effort is beyond him, but I also have to say that this is not entirely his fault. The world has moved on in fourteen years and not always for the better.

For those who have not seen either film Baron Cohen’s comic creation Borat Sagdiyev is Kazakhstan’s fourth most famous TV journalist. In the first film he comes to America to make a documentary on the country, this time round he is back trying to apologise. Specifically, he is delivering a bribe on behalf of his President to repair the damage done to his country’s reputation and encourage US leader ‘McDonald Trump’ to let him into his dictator’s club.

When the initial plan goes awry Borat comes up with an alternative. He will offer his 15-year-old daughter, Tutar, (Maria Bakalova) as an inducement to US Vide-President Mike Pence.

The problem facing the film is apparent right from the start. First time round Borat was a foreign nobody trading on the kindness – or at least tolerance – of strangers. But the first film was a huge international hit and now everyone knows Borat. The scene at the start where he is mobbed by fans is funny, especially since it is the mirror of the start of the first film, but it shows what he is up against.

Borat has to resort to pranking people who have never heard of him and they tend to be duller, less interesting, and – ironically - less deserving of humiliation. More to be pitied than scorned as my mother used to say. For their part, all of them seem to tolerate his antics with a weary ‘what fresh hell is this’ expression.

Similarly, what was shocking first time round seems normalised now. With a Chief Eexcutive who mocks the disabled and refuses to condemn QAnon the everyday bar is set pretty high, so the anti-Semitic baker, the borderline pervy cosmetic surgeon, and the conspiracy nuts just aren’t going to cut it. Baron Cohen is no longer a satirist, in these circumstances he has become a documentarian.

I suspect he may be aware of this since the film, which comes perilously close in places to running out of unscripted material, relies heavily on a scripted narrative between Borat and Tutar. This turns out to be its saving grace because newcomer Bakalova is the best thing in the film by some distance bringing an injection of much-needed energy and fun in places.

Of course, she features in the most talked about scene in which she interviews Trump confidante Rudy Giuliani. It is sleazy, creepy, and spectacularly ill-judged on his part but at the same time, given the people he clings to, more sad than shocking.

Technically the film is a great example of what can be done, even in the most difficult circumstances, with a little creativity and imagination. Frustratingly the last ten minutes shows a sharpness and comic invention which is missing from the rest of the film as Borat reimagines one of his greatest hits.  Some more of this incisiveness and less punching down might have made for a better film.

For me, in the end Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, misses more often than it hits but, as it says at the top, I think that’s down to us and not him.


 

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